PERPETUAL STRANGER IN THE PROMISED LAND

Date:
April 26, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
Section 7; Page 3, Column 1; Book Review Desk
Byline:
By A.G. MOJTABAI; A.G. Mojtabai, whose most recent novel is ''A Stopping Place,'' is Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English at Harvard.
Lead:

WHERE THE JACKALSHOWL And Other Stories. By AmosOz. Translated by Nicholas de Lange and Philip Simpson. 217 pp. New York: Helen and Kurt Wolff/ Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $12.95.

ELSEWHERE, PERHAPS, ideals may falter, the nerve fail, but not in Israel, continually exposed as it is to threat from the outside. ''Elsewhere, Perhaps'' was the superbly apposite title of an early novel by the distinguished Israeli writer AmosOz. The novel, published in Hebrew in 1966, provided a detailed picture of life on the kibbutz. Two senses of ''elsewhere'' were active in the book: elsewhere, perhaps, the laws of gravity obtain - not here; elsewhere, perhaps in some kingdom by the sea, exists the model which our kibbutz imperfectly reflects, a society harmonious, healthful, joyful, loving - not here, not yet.

Text:

''Elsewhere, Perhaps'' was a book full of unease that was not allowed to surface, the tension smoothed over by the voice of the narrator, a voice level and interminable, sometimes smug or starched with disapproval, but always composed, never shaken. The unidentified narrator was a man soberly respectful of the principles of collectivism upon which the kibbutz was founded, yet cognizant of the difficulties in living up to these standards, a spokesman full of injunctions to will power and exemplary tales of changes of heart. Any unsettling doubts were contained and tempered by irony. Why, for example, the narrator asked, can't a man of sound principles control his nightmares? Wherever one went, the narrator stood between the reader and the unfolding drama, much as a tour guide stands before, and defends against, a visitor's direct contact with a foreign scene.

''Where the Jackals Howl'' is, in many respects, the double, the darker brother of ''Elsewhere, Perhaps.''

This collection of stories, published in Hebrew also in 1966, is only now appearing in English. It is, by far, the stronger book. It is also far more troubling. Here, the unease is directly confronted; there is no mediation, no muting, no equable light. This is a book of dark shadows and glare and, through the shadows, in and around and through each story, glides the jackal. As a literary artifice, the jackal - or the dispossessed-turned-jackal - is overdone, but as an ever-present feature of the geographical and psychic landscape, the jackal cannot be too attentively heeded. There were jackals, too, in ''Elsewhere, Perhaps,'' but they were neatly fenced off, as in the following passage:

''Our village is encircled. Outside the fence something stirs. If only you could interpret the signs. A snarling menace surrounds the fence trying to penetrate and disrupt our tidy order.''

Now, mark the difference in ''Where the Jackals Howl'': ''... we cannot see the jackals as they spring out from their hiding places. Inevitably we miss the sight of their soft noses sniffing the air, their paws gliding over the turf, scarcely touching the ground. ''The dogs of the kibbutz, they alone understand this enchanted motion. That is why they howl at night in jealousy, menace and rage. That is why they paw at the ground, straining at their chains till their necks are on the point of breaking.

''... An everlasting curse stands between house dwellers and those who live in mountains and ravines. It happens sometimes in the middle of the night that a plump house-dog hears the voice of his accursed brother. It is not from the dark fields that this voice comes; the dog's detested foe dwells in his own heart.''

What makes the jackal so very menacing a presence here is that the threat is no longer simply external. ''It is not from the dark fields that this voice comes.''

''Where the Jackals Howl'' is a collection of eight stories, a few of them with a shared cast of characters, the rest with apparently nothing in common. But the absence of a common thread is only apparent. There is a consistent inwardness, and a curious, but necessary, lack of resolution to all these tales; they are closely linked by the way the author's mind works in each of them, turning and turning upon some question that yields no answer - a desertion, a hunger never to be sated, an unjust preference, God's inexplicable favor. The most haunting issue raised is that of exclusion, dispossession - the question of Isaac and Ishmael, why one son is favored and the other not. The issue crops up in many guises; it might be something as seemingly mild and commonplace as an elderly bachelor in the midst of families, or a son who can think of no way of distinguishing himself before his distinguished father, or a passionate suitor passed over for a heedless one. Placed together as they are here, these apparently disparate situations can be seen as having mutual bearing upon one another.

In ''Upon This Evil Earth,'' the story of Jephthah is imaginatively re-created. Jephthah beseeches God for love: ''God love me and I will be your servant, touch me and I will be the leanest and most terrible of your hounds, only do not be remote.'' Jephthah tries to think of himself as someone like Isaac and Jacob, who were also sons of their fathers' old age, but is continually reminded that he is ''the son of another woman, like Ishmael.''

Judges II tells us that Jephthah was the son of Gilead, the Gileadite, and a harlot; here he is presented as the son of an Ammonite harlot. The particularity of this detail gives the story of a divided man an even sharper focus.

We know how Jepthhah was told he would not inherit his father's house, how he was driven out by the sons of his father's wife, how he came to live in the land of Tob, how the elders of Gilead sought him out as their captain in repelling an Ammonite invasion, and how Jephthah finally consented, vowing to sacrifice whatsoever first came forth from the doors of his house to meet him on his victorious return. And who could forget the terrible unfolding of that vow?

''Like a man possessed by a dream Jephthah stood looking up to the house, only half-seeing the darkly beautiful one coming out to meet him with songs. And after her came the maidens with timbrels and the shepherds with pipes and his father Gilead, a broad, bitter man ... And all the dogs were barking and the cows were lowing ... all as in a dream, nothing was left out.''

The question of God's selective favor - of Isaac, the preferred - preys upon Jephthah to the end. Surely God will, at the last moment, remit this sacrifice as he did for Abraham and Isaac.

We know the story, but perhaps we have not properly savored its bitterness. Nor have we truly reflected on the bitterness of Ishmael, of whom Jephthah, the perpetual stranger, is perpetually reminded. In Islamic tradition, significantly, the fate of Ishmael (Isma'il) has been pondered and somewhat ameliorated, and there is even a popular belief among Moslems that Isma'il, not Isaac, was the beloved son whom Abraham offered up in sacrifice. These rancors have not abated over the centuries: The children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael are today still locked in enmity.

The enmity takes many forms. It may be the friction between tillers of the soil and wandering herdsmen. ''Nomad and Viper'' starts out as the tale of such a conflict, but slowly changes shape.

As the story begins, conditions of drought and famine have forced the military authorities to open the roads leading north to the Bedouins. Foot-and-mouth disease, crop damage, and a rash of petty thefts follow in the wake of the nomads -also a mysterious music from the encampments at night. Geula, a not-so-young unmarried woman living on a kibbutz, stumbles into a Bedouin on one of her solitary walks. She is repelled and strangely fascinated by the man's dark beauty; she is touched by his elaborate courtesy; what she cannot seem to feel is the full measure of his humanity. Together, they share a smoke. Then the man begins to pray. Geula persists in interrupting him with impertinent personal questions; the Bedouin flees. Afterward, alone in the shower, shivering ''with disgust,'' she experiences the strange recoil and twisting of her own thwarted desires:

''Those black fingers, and how he went straight for my throat. ... It was only by biting and kicking that I managed to escape. Soap my belly and everything, soap it again and again. Yes, let the boys go right away tonight to their camp and smash their black bones because of what they did to me.''

Notice the easy shift from ''he'' to ''they'' - hatred is a great simplifier. And yet, later, lying among the bushes, watching the planes overhead and listening to the sounds borne by the night winds, Geula is overcome by another feeling, a longing to be healed: ''How she longed to make her peace and to forgive. Not to hate him and wish him dead. Perhaps to get up and go to him. ...''

''Where the Jackals Howl'' is a strong, beautiful, disturbing book. It speaks piercingly -whether wittingly or unwittingly, I know not - of a dimension of the Israeli experience not often discussed, of the specter of the other brother, of a haunting, an unhealed wound; it reminds us of polarizations everywhere that bind and diminish us, that may yet rend us.